I was working yesterday in the Mitchell Library perusing early Norfolk Island records as part of my “day job” – General Editor of the Biographical Database of Australia. As I and another experienced genealogist searched for useful lists of residents, we talked about how the internet has spawned so many “wannabe genealogists” and how a huge amount of bad research is now being published on the internet and, accordingly, spreads like a malignant virus. We talked about how these people stumble across information about someone and grab it as a reference to their own ancestor (particularly if it relates to someone “important”!) without making any attempt to verify that it actually does relate to their ancestor. Or they find “research” about their ancestor that someone else has done and accept it “holus bolus” – again without making any attempt to verify the accuracy of the information using original records. We agreed that most of these people have no understanding of how to undertake research or how to interpret historical records and therefore no ability to actually determine the truth – nor any interest in historical accuracy, in most cases. They just find it fun to “grab” ancestors like they are prizes in a treasure hunt and after they have found someone vaguely suitable for a particular slot, they move on to finding another person to fit into another slot.
So it was ironic when I came home and found emails from people who actually claim to be experienced researchers that revealed the most extraordinary ignorance about the nature of record-keeping in relation to the New South Wales registration of births, deaths and marriages – one of the foundations of genealogical research. I won’t name any names in case they read this web-post – I don’t want to humiliate them. Instead, I will use the example of the registration of records relating to Frederick Wordsworth Ward junior, the son of bushranger Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Bugg, to explain how the system actually works and why claims of "forgery" are completely unsubstantiated.
See Frederick Wordsworth Ward junior.
So it was ironic when I came home and found emails from people who actually claim to be experienced researchers that revealed the most extraordinary ignorance about the nature of record-keeping in relation to the New South Wales registration of births, deaths and marriages – one of the foundations of genealogical research. I won’t name any names in case they read this web-post – I don’t want to humiliate them. Instead, I will use the example of the registration of records relating to Frederick Wordsworth Ward junior, the son of bushranger Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Bugg, to explain how the system actually works and why claims of "forgery" are completely unsubstantiated.
See Frederick Wordsworth Ward junior.
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